Here, And Not Here
by nezstereo
Summary: Sappy one-shots about Balthier and Fran.
1. sky

Note: So, I only played through FFXII recently, and was completely blown away! What a good game. Anyways, these are just one-shots and various, unrelated stories about Balthier and Fran...because they're amazing. I don't own Final Fantasy.

* * *

They fall from the Bahumut in the wake of the flames, streaming towards the earth. Balthier is a few feet above her, having pushed her out first (always a gentleman, roughly), his limbs flailing in all directions, hands scrabbling to reach her, to hold her.

Fran is not sure why, but the sight offers her a pang of nostalgia: of a younger Balthier, gangly and not yet grown into his adult body, all long-limbed and false confidences. Of his smile, as he would run along ancient stone walls, leap across pits of fire or vats or who knows what chemical, brave countless gunfights against soldiers, beasts, anything. She remembers lingering, always behind, her heart surging with a foreign emotion, her head suddenly, momentarily dizzy with worry. It was not that Fran could not keep up with her Hume partner, rather that, some instinctual part of her had known, always, from the beginning, to take the rear. Just in case.

Years have taken those early months of panic away from her, but every so often, she feels a brief rush of concern, seeing him dodge a killing blow, or pick a fight with a particularly irritable Bangaa. Instead, the feeling is replaced with easiness, of a perfect synchronicity she's never felt before; the incline of their heads, the small smirk that plays across his lips, and, parallel, on hers.

So now they are falling, and Fran finally concedes, ever patient, spreading her arms to slow her own fall so that Balthier can careen towards her, into her, his hands going to her waist as if they have been there forever. He presses his face into her neck.

"We are not going to die," he tells her, over the roar of explosions and the cleaving of metal.

"No," she answers back, that warmth in her chest spreading to tingle her fingers, her toes. Fran loops her own arms about his neck.

"What was that look for, anyways?"

If it had been another time, when they were not falling from the sky, Fran would have answered cryptically, but she blurts out:

"I was simply thinking how you worry me so that I cannot stand it, and how it is a shame since I shan't ever leave you, I will perhaps be going to an early grave due to all the fretting you cause me."

Her manner of speaking always seems to move him, half-amused and half-rapt, his eyes positively glowing as he lifts his head and kisses her suddenly, quickly, moving away to whisper, breathlessly:

"I love you."

Having thought her previous statement and his not-yet-uttered response to be the closest either of them would come to confessing such things, Fran is stunned. Balthier, apparently, feels the same, his cheeks flushed, hair rushing like summer grass about his head, his earrings waggling in the wind.

"I love you," she tells him back, reassures him, and she wonders if they would say this if they were not almost-going-to-die. Not dying. She cannot admit to that.

And so they fall, faster and faster, to the ground.

* * *

The sand whispers in the summer breeze, tickling Fran's nose. The Strahl is not a few yards away, along a remote part of the shore, its shade creeping ever closer to her sun-bathing spot as the day passes. After the chaos of it all, her partner had wisely suggested they lay low for a month or so, a vacation of sorts, away from sky-pirating and kingdom-saving. Fran is inclined to agree, and here they are, Balthier's cheek is pressing somewhat uncomfortably against her shoulder, his soft breathing a song in her ear. A bird passes overhead, and he stirs, eyes fluttering open.

"Fran," he murmurs, as if barely believing it, his collar mussed and his torso bandaged painstakingly.

"Balthier," she replies, their smiles identically irrepressible as the sun shines overhead.


	2. boy

AN: Another one! I'm on a roll.

* * *

As a boy, he'd been clumsy, an eighteen year old Hume who stumbled over his own feet. His body had grown disproportionately, too quickly, and he looked strange, very young and very likely to trip over all manner of things. Fran had been hesitant at first, when he had approached her in the bar, clearly Archadian and even more clearly an aristocrat. The thing that changed her mind were his eyes, alight with quicksilver and wisdom beyond his years. Later on in the week, when he showed her the Strahl, she found she also appreciated his voice, not exactly deep, not yet, but knowledgeable without sounding condescending, and toned just right. Balthier had seemed, to her, to be perfectly groomed and raised, and she could just imagine him in a palatial home, drinking tea and knowing which utensil was used for what, always saying _please _and _thank you _and _yes, sir._

A year passed and she woke up one morning to find he had grown up almost overnight, his form suddenly muscled and filled out, as if his skin had been a loose fitting shirt that had shrunk during washing. His face was more defined, thinner now without the comforts of his upbringing. And he was fully Balthier now, wit and flattery, the man who had been sleeping inside Ffamran, who had peered out at her through those young eyes and whispered to her: _the skies shall find me, and I will find you. _


	3. ring

AN: Here's a slew of new ones, just in time for that dreaded holiday, Valentine's Day. I didn't even want to upload this one because it's so fluffy and ridiculous. Gahhhhh.

* * *

One day, Vaan looks up to see Fran at their doorstep, bearing an armful of wrapped packages, spoils she and Balthier have thought to share with them.

"They are not necessarily valuable," she explains to both Vaan and Penelo later, over drinks. "I think, though Balthier will not admit it, that we both find ourselves missing the company from time to time."

Penelo smiles. "Where is that old sky pirate, anyways? We're always expecting to see you both in the Sandsea..."

Gazing into her cup, Fran smiles back: "He is working with Nono on the Strahl. We're simply docked here for the night, to stock up on supplies and rest at an inn. I cannot remember the last time I slept in a real bed..."

From his stool, Vaan chuckles. "That brings back memories...say, Fran, what's that ring you're wearing? It's pretty neat."

His companion leans forward. "Oooh," Penelo murmurs, "That's really pretty. Where'd you get it?"

Their Viera friend is silent for a moment, seeming to consider her reply.

"Balthier gave it to me," she finally says. "It is of an Archadian make, a family relic."

And although she will not say anymore, both Vaan and Penelo notice that she's wearing it on her ring finger.


	4. first meeting

AN: A typical "how they met" story. Sighhhhh.

* * *

She spotted him across the room, a fresh-faced Archadian aristocrat, dressed too nicely for the Balfonheim bar, speaking with too dignified an accent to be anything short of a nobleman's son.

He had drawn coins out of a large purse, and Fran had heard from across the room the quiet, heavy sifting of gil in that bag and her stomach growled.

She had not eaten in nearly a week; being Viera, she survived much longer without sustenance, but she disliked starvation as much as anyone, and was not above conning a poor, naive rich child of his coin purse. His father surely would give him another, maybe a hundred more.

And so she decided upon him, made her way across the room as sensuously as she deemed appropriate, and directly up to his table. The look upon his face told her he had perhaps never seen a Viera, or if he had, it had been from a distance or in a book.

"May I help you?"

His accent was even more distinctive up close, now that she was so close instead of at the opposite end of the Whitecap. Although usually she detested such behavior, Fran forced a coy smile, and asks:

"I was going to inquire whether or not I could join you."

The boy has the grace to flush scarlet. "O-of course. Please, sit down. Barkeep!"

He tells her to order anything she would like, and so she ordered a bottle of Bhujerban wine, and poured them both a glass.

"Have you ever had Bhujerban wine?"

He smiled. "I'm afraid I have not. I am, you see, only recently vacated from Archadia, where I have lived all my life."

"That is a pity," she murmured, closing her eyes partway and fixing him with a pointed look as she slid the cup across the table to him. "It is quite strong, but you will never taste a better drink."

The Archadian sniffed tentatively at the liquor, then swallowed the whole thing in one gulp, exhaling with satisfaction.

"That is quite good," he consented. "My apologies. I am Balthier. May I ask your name?"

"Fran," she said. "Drink, and tell me of your life in Archadia."

It takes no less than half another glass for him to confess he is the son of a member of the Senate, that he has only traveled to his family's summer home along the Phon coast, and knows nothing of the world.

"My father has given me leave to see Ivalice in its entirety, and money is no object, so I may travel in style and luxury. Except that," and here he leaned in close to her, conspiratorially, "I want to be amongst the people. I detest it when I am viewed as some sort of royalty. It is only my father's position..."

And on and on he goes, until she cannot hear him any longer and instead focuses on his hands, oddly calloused for a nobleman, and a light in his eyes. He seems too earnest, too optimistic, and the wine is acting too strongly on her empty stomach, for she can swear he is smirking at her.

"We should go somewhere more private," she whispered into his ear, and he followed, out the doors, down to the end of an alleyway where the water laps against the shore. Here, she pulled him close, and then pressed a knife gently against his throat only to feel the cold end of a pistol pressing into her gut.

Balthier grinned wickedly. "My suspicions are correct, it would seem. You would try to rob a poor, helpless Archadian youth?" Fran winces.

"I have not eaten in a week, and would plan not to go hungry for many months with such money as you are flaunting. It is not as if you are without wealth, in any case."

But the overly formal speech has gone, and the light in his eyes she mistook as childishness emerges as an infinite cleverness. It appears she has been double-crossed by a better actor than she.

Conceding, she pulled the blade from his throat.

"Who are you, really?" she demanded.

He surrendered as well, tucking his gun back into its holster. "I am the leading man, of course."

Met with silence, he continued: "My name _is_ Balthier, that is true, and I am Archadian. I am of wealth, this is also true. But I am a runaway, like you and only with money because I have stolen it, like you."

This struck a chord; how could he know of...?

He chuckled. "You are Viera, but you live amongst Humes, wearing their armors and drinking their wines. You cannot be from the Wood, simply visiting, because this is forbidden. You must be a castaway, left because you are a criminal (which I would not doubt) or because you _wanted _to leave."

Fran sighed. "You are quiet clever, for a Hume, thief."

"Not thief. Sky pirate. An unknown, yes, but I am an unknown with much ambitions. Am I to call you Fran, or have you a real name you would prefer?"

"Nay, my name is Fran."

The sky pirate Balthier smiled then, a luminous smile and his eyes seemed to carry within them the ambition of a thousand kings.

"I shall remember it."

He began to walk back down the alleyway into the streets, which are emptied of crowds at so late an hour, and without thinking, she started to follow, finding the movement natural as they walk in rhythm with one another as if it has always been so.

They parted at the Aerodrome, but she returned the next day with her pack, having since heard the following morning that he was in want of a mechanic.

And so it began.


	5. fascination

AN: A super short one, sort of a prelude to the "Families" story.  


* * *

Fran does not pry into Balthier's past, and has never outright asked him any question pertaining to it; instead, she has circled round the subject, until he finally confesses some such knowledge that reveals to his partner, piece by piece, the sordid details of his former life.

Often, though, she senses he sees through her game, playing along only for a love of wordplay.

They are both fairly secretive, and so although they have been partners for some time, there are still thousands of things she does not know about him, and he would say the same of her, she is certain.

Perhaps this is why she stays; constantly, she learns new things about him or from him, and Fran would confess, if she were prone to confessing (she isn't) that Balthier is the single most fascinating Hume she's ever met.


	6. sisters

AN: Inspired by concept sketches of Fran and her sisters. So cute!

* * *

One day, they are walking through Rabanastre, and Fran spots a young girl, braiding her younger sister's hair.

"What is it?" Balthier asks later aboard the Strahl, for she'd stilled suddenly, in the middle of the square, overwhelmed by the memory of Jote, of herself, of Mjrn, in the mossy glens of Eruyt, Jote's fingers weaving through her hair as she read aloud stories of Hume wars and great Wyrms, of the Gods and the Mother wood, of all manners of things. Here in the belly of their airship, elbow deep in engine oils, the pangs of sisterhood are long gone to her, but still she remembers, the three of them, Mjrn considerably smaller, their hands linked and their smiles identical. Everyone could tell they were sisters.

"I was simply...remembering my sisters. I have two." Fran grabs a wrench.

Although to others this knowledge would seem only barely important, in their relationship, this information is the largest offering she has ever given him and Balthier smiles, curious.

"I did not know you had family."

She ponders a reply, then:

"Exiled Viera are considered dead to the Wood, and so it is best to think that I have no family at all. I would not regret my decision to leave in a thousand lifetimes...I do not miss my village, but I miss my younger sister at times, such as this time. Since seeing those Hume children playing in the square today."

"Is she much like you?"

Balthier sits down next to her as she picks apart their engine, handing her tools when she asks as he works upon their pipe system.

"I could not say. She was but a child when I left. But what I knew of Mjrn, I know she is lighthearted and good."

"And the other sister?"

"My leaving broke her heart, I think, and severed our closeness."

There is silence.

"I too have sisters." He finally says, seeming lost in thought. "Three. They are much older than I, or my two brothers. Married now, I imagine, with children. My father saw very little use in them, except as beautiful things. He was more interested in my brothers and I."

"You have a large family."

"I would not say so. My brothers have been dead ten years now, lost to the wars and to Draklor, and to my sisters I am a stranger. As for my father..." He trails off.

Silence again. Fran stands, and slips her hand into his and squeezes in gently, and this is all that is needed to coax him to lay his head on her shoulder and close his eyes.


	7. promise

AN: Just an idea I thought of, since it's never specified when Balthier and Fran met, and under what circumstances. Less romantic, and more just generic partners/bros, ha ha.

* * *

He couldn't remember his life without her, as a child in Draklor, scampering about his father's knees. The red uniform had been sewn and modified to fit him as a scientist's frock by one of the research students, and it swung inches above the floor, ragged at its hem.

"Ffamran," Cid had called, and his voice was God's to the boy of five, fresh-faced and so _smart_, he had built his own hover using the scraps in their building department.

Standing at stiff attention, his hair combed, Ffamran had gazed up at his father and their guest, a women, but with rabbit's ears.

_Viera_, he had thought, recognizing easily the species he had read about thoroughly in his twenty-four volume History of Ivalice.

"Father," he had said, and then bowed low to the Viera, a huntress, Woodwarder, from her armors and bow. "I have written to my sisters, informing them of our inability to join them on the Phon coast."

Cid nods curtly, and Ffamran swells, practically glowing in the approval of the man who re-built Archadia from its roots upwards.

"Ffamran, this is Fran," Cid gestures vaguely to his Viera companion. "She is yours, your guardian as of today. Treat her as you would me; my orders are her orders. I shall speak with you later at greater a length, son."

"Yes, sir," the boy had said, and that left the two of them alone, an Archadian child and an exiled Viera.

Silence filled the room, permeated by the hum of distant machines, of gently rocking test-tubes, the whir of airship gears. Ffamran's eyes drifted closed each night to those lullaby sounds, as much a part of him as his blood beating in his veins, his lungs filling with air.

The Viera peers downwards at him, and he feels suddenly quite small in comparison, under the scrutiny of her ruby eyes.

"You are Fran," he says, slowly.

"Yes," she replies, and her voice is like clear, cooled water. "And you are Ffamran."

"That is my name given me by my mother before her death...but it is not what I would wish you to call me, if you do not mind."

He strains in looking for expression in her face, and can nearly see the slight, subtle smile that graces her features.

"I do not mind, Son of Bunansa."

Ffamran tugs at his frock. "_My_ name is Balthier, as I have chosen it. What do you think?"

Fran tilts her heard to one side, and nods slowly.

"It is so. You seem a Balthier to my view."

"Well, of course I do. It is why I chose it as my name. What are you supposed to do, when you are my guardian? I do not think I need protection."

"Your father wishes it so."

"I do not agree with him," Balthier admits, shyly, turning on his heel and beginning the long stroll back to his chambers on the 21st floor. Fran follows behind, only a second or so, and he feels a strange thing, as they walk down the hall together towards the lift. It is a settling in his gut, and a quieting of his mind, so that it is as if the Viera had always been there, a step to his back.

"But you will do as he says, for he is your Father. It is the way of Humes"

"Not always," he argues. "Many times House Solidor and its branches have experienced uprisings and battles between sons and fathers. But you are right; I obey my father. You stay as Guardian of Balthier, but..."

They enter the lift, and he enters the series of codes required for unlocking access to his floor. The doors slide shut with a whisper, and in the recycled air-space, he murmurs words he will never forget:

"But we are secretly Partners, Fran. Companions, for life. Do you agree?"

And he knows it is bold, to force anyone, let alone a Viera, to make a pact such as this, but he has not ever had a companion before, confined as he is to the cold halls of science. So he asks, and to his youthful surprise, she takes his hand in his, warm, and whispers:

"I do agree, Balthier."

* * *

"You would become a Judge, then?"

Fran sits at the desk chair in his quarters, which have expanded to include the entirety of the 21st floor, given to him as a present on his 13th naming day. They sit in the library, Balthier splayed across his favorite armchair, a deep maroon color. A hologram runs information in scrawling texts across the screen, in Archadian and Old Archadian, in the Seeq language and in Moogle shorthand, as per the Prodigal son's programming it so. It reads:

"Bunansa son to accept position as Judge..." and so on.

The so-called son has grown, dressing in expensive Archadian fashion, his hair grown to his shoulders and falling in his eyes.

Balthier breathes loudly, exhaling in that exasperated way the adolescent Humes do, when they are feeling arrogant or misunderstood. Fran does not understand him, truthfully, but she misunderstands him less than anyone else in all of Ivalice, and this counts for everything.

"Balthier, you may speak your mind in my prescence. Has it not been so these years?"

But he remains silent for a long while, a time that Fran waits through patiently, for she has waited nearly thirty years to find a Hume as him, who makes her decision to leave the Wood worth everything.

"Why do you speak with that Researcher of Aerodynamics with such familiarity?" is what he finally asks, standing up and scaling one of the many ladders to search a high-up bookshelf. Fran watches him warily, always frightened he may fall, though he is now 14, and capable enough.

"Marche?"

"Yes," he says, and then whispers venomously, as if she could not hear: "You know his name."

"I share his passion for airships, as do you, would you to speak with him, Balthier. It is not what you seem to imply."

"And what do I seem to imply?"

The Bunansa Son turns his head to her, for once looking down to her, not dwarfed in her company. His green eyes are cold, full of jealousy she has never seen, and Fran feels something twist at her insides.

And the Viera and Hume gaze at one another, across a thousand seas of distance.

Once, when he was a boy, he would tell her everything, he would talk and talk and talk until the sun left the sky and she bade him goodnight til morning. Once, he swore they were close as blood, ten years old and already a whisper of the man he would become one day.

Now their time is filled with silences and his temper, and Cid, always his father to whom nothing is good enough.

"That we are involved, romantically," Fran answers. "He is a boy to me, as are you."

At this, Balthier falls quiet again, returning to his search.

A few seconds, then: "Why are you becoming a Judge?"

"Cid would have it so. He has dreamed of this for one of his sons for many years; my brothers were not cut of the cloth of Bunansa and had too much of my mother within them. So they were soldiers without rank, now graves in our family's plot. Victims of this war."

"That does not explain anything."

He jumps from the ladder. "Do I have to explain everything? Why must I have reason to be a Judge? Can I not simply want to do it?"

Fran balks, protests: "You never mentioned it before now. Before this moment, it was only a wish of Cid's. It is not your wish...I thought..."

"Thought that we would be sky-pirates, like I said when I was six? Fran, you are old but you have not grown up. That is a child's dream. I must be practical."

"It is not what you want..."

Balthier's face screws up with anger. "_You know nothing of what I want!_ You have no idea!"

Fran stands up, full of unaccustomed fury, a strange thing nearly foreign to her. She rarely feels anger, far too patient and intuitive, less expectant and thus never disappointed.

But now she is angry beyond thought, and Balthier seems to realize his mistake, already fumbling for words with an apology written in his face. She blusters past him, into the corridor and to the lift, walking as fast as she can...

"Fran, wait, no, I do not mean---please, Fran!"

Fran turns in front of the elevator doors, and tells him: "You have outgrown me, Balthier. I find myself for want of a new profession...You shall make a fine Judge."

This is where she leaves him, the first time, hurt and guilty and still mad, a boy-yet-a-man, with a starched collar and too-long hair.

* * *

The three-pronged helmet of a High Judge rests in his lap, the symbol of rank second only to Judge Magister. Balthier is seventeen, alone in a small encampment in the Estersand with only the arriving company of a Rozzarian diplomat and his party to comfort him.

He should not think of himself as alone, not entirely, for there are his soliders, resentful to be commandeered by a mere _boy_, and his stable runner, who cares for the chocobos.

A shadow on his tent indicates a message; staring into the empty sockets of his helm for a second more, he then lifts it onto his head, and turns to face the entrance.

"You may enter."

"Sir, the Rozzarian diplomat has sent his hired guard ahead to greet us and inform us of his whereabouts in relation to his arrival."

"Send them in."

The shadow on the canvas of his quarters should have been enough, and so it was, for when the silhouette of a Viera, with the ears and longbow appeared, he felt his heart wrench at the loss of Fran, only to find it increase tenfold to see her enter, and kneel before him.

"Judge Bunansa," she mutters, eyes averted to the ground.

"Leave us," Balthier commands the soldier, who obeys, and as soon as he is disappeared, he tears off his Judge's helmet as quickly as he put it on, getting down upon his knees to embrace her. She stiffens in his touch, perhaps because of the armor, but more than likely because of their parting.

"Forgive me, forgive me, I knew not what I did," he whispers, over and over and over, tears suddenly coming that he had not known he had been holding, and it is then that she takes him in her arms, silent as always.

* * *

She sees him every month, bringing him tidings of the world outside, until the day of his eighteenth naming day, when he folds his Judge's crimson cape, lays his helm atop it, and leaves Archadia forever.

They fly now, pirates and partners, as they had always vowed, and there are times when Balthier turns to her, the wind whipping his hair...he feels that settling as he had before, looking into her eyes, only now he knows what it is: it is feeling at Home.


	8. conditions

AN: Just another cutesy thing, ha ha.

* * *

"I will agree to this on three conditions."

Balthier looked up from his porridge, mouth full, and replied: "Mmmph?"

Fran sat down, legs crossed. Her expression was unreadable.

"One: you must not give me ridiculous gifts. I do not want extravagant jewelry or clothing."

The morning sky is a light orange, and Nono is below-decks, rattling in the engine room. Balthier blinked slowly.

"Two: You may not flirt with any other."

In the distance, bells chimed from a clock tower.

"And third?" Balthier asked.

"You may not go about, crowing to everyone about your conquering me. It is untrue, and moreover displeasing to me."

Fran coughed, then, stood up, and began to make tea for herself. Her partner sat in thought, finished his breakfast, then stood up and leaned over her shoulder, his cheek fitting into the curve where her neck meets her collarbone.

"I have conquered you?" he whispered.

The tea kettle is set upon the stove. Fran sighed. "That is all you can remember of my ultimatum, Balthier?"

"Certainly not." His voice is muffled against her soft skin, her hair tickled his forehead. "I remember all that you speak to me; it is music to my ears, dearest Fran. One: no gifts, two: no flirting, and three: no bragging. It is simple enough to recall."

"The simplicity is intentional...I felt anything more than that would only perplex you."

"I am quiet simple minded," Balthier admitted, then he smiled slowly, lazily, in the way he was wont to do on mornings in the hot summertime.

Fran turned to face him, and pressed her lips to his forehead.

"The answer to your query is yes. But I would have it so you do not spread such truths through all of Ivalice."

"I would not dream of it," he murmured as he kissed her brow. "Instead, I shall merely think my boast: that Fran loves Balthier, dreaded sky pirate. Does that satisfy you?"

She said nothing in return, only took his hands and pulled him away, leaving the tea to sit, getting cold.


End file.
